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Shex

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Posts posted by Shex

    Let's Critique This Week: Neopets

    in General Game Development

    Posted

    So, I remembered Neopets was one of the first games I joined, so I just logged back in. My oldest pet is 3818 days old by now, over ten years... 

    • It seems it didn't change much, I could still find the old games I loved to play, played a few rounds, but I must admit... those games aged. They don't feel acceptable to play anymore, terrible hit boxes and bad controls. I've seen many indie-games that I enjoyed way more. But on the other hand, there are so many different games, that probably does not count, especially for newer ones. So I switched to the newest games... just to realize I can't play any of them because you need to buy items first. Okay, no thanks. 
    • A big plus for me (especially 10 years ago) always was that Neopets was translated into German. All the games, ingame texts, items, etc. were in German. This is less important to me now, since I learned English, but back then I was 14-15 years old and had just started learning English. I probably would not have registered on an English-only site. 
    • The art style always bothered me. I liked it when I joined, but soon it felt inconsistent. Too many different styles, now even 3D-rendered images, and all in all I miss details and reworking of old artwork. It's probably a very personal opinion, but I feel I 'grew out' of Neopets
    • Economy-wise I never felt comfortable with money on Neopets. I could never buy the brushes or pets that I wanted, there were way too many items to get a chance to find some rare ones and make money from them. It's simply overwhelming and it feels like I have to put a lot of time into it before I can make decent money. 
    • Even after just 15 Minutes I found two bugs :') It just showed me I had 150NC (premium currency), when I clicked they were back to 0. Also all the Umlauts in the German names of Items are STILL (after 10+ years) just shown as questionmark-icons: 

    neopetslol_by_jezeval-db5ev71.png

     

     

    All in all, I think one can enjoy neopets for the minigames, which is what I did mostly. Played some local multiplayer games with my friend back in school, and we had a good time. Everything else, exploring the map and especially getting currency, takes just too much time to get into for me personally. 

    I just feel neopets aged, and not in a good way. I don't think I'll log in again for another ten years or so :)

     

     

    • Like 1

    What makes a community good?

    in General Game Development

    Posted

    Yeah, active people are one important aspect, but I also find it important that some people help newbies (with giveaways or just showing some tricks). 

    In general a positive attitude towards mods, admins and the site itself is good, but it's probably not something a game owner can influence too much... just by being honest and providing regular updates. 

    Must-have features for a pet site?

    in Coding and Programming

    Posted

    Well, personal opinion incoming for what I think would be needed, might not be needed for all games though :)

     

    Registration (including verification), password reset, profile picture, nickname change, personal messages

    user roles (mods, admin, users, banned), rights for different groups

    forums, news system

    currency system (ingame currency, 'real life currency'), currency transfer between users

    inventory; items; item types (decoration, customization, food, crafting), function of these items, transfer between users

    pets (stats, information (age, lineage, sex), visual information (color, markings, etc)), pet transfer, levelling, pet search; also a way to get pets (finding, custom creation, breeding, etc)

    NPC shops (automatically restocked), user shops and/or user auction house

    some basic activities: exploration, fighting, caring, show, crafting, alchemy, etc.; just something to do

    some way to easily add items and new content (new pets, new markings, etc)

     

     

     

    • Like 2

    What feature do you feel is the hardest feature to develop?

    in Coding and Programming

    Posted

    ...

    Sometimes I forget the brackets in BBCode... 

    #LifeOfANon-Coder

     

    ______

    Well, I tried to learn PHP and Ruby and tried to think about all features I want for my game and how I could code them and came to the conclusion that to me it is the hardest to think about breeding mechanisms, taking information about color from parents, coming up with percentages of markings and stuff, because there's tons of stuff to think about and code. 

    • Like 1

    If you could build a game without a programmer....

    in Feedback & Help

    Posted

    Yeah, I was pretty hesitant, especially as there was a demo promised which never came to life :/

     

    But back to topic, I'd love something like that, but I also doubt that a premade script could fit the needs of different projects. It should be easy to use for non-coders but also easy to edit and add own scripts :)

    But I think it's a huge, huuuuge project, though I'd love to have somethink like that... 

    If you could build a game without a programmer....

    in Feedback & Help

    Posted · Edited by Shex

    I remember there already was a big project like this running, but I can't find it now since the forum I saw it in is down ( :') )

     

    All I remember was that the maker already coded several sim/pet games before (I remember at least one horse sim) and that they had their script in alpha or beta, already ready to be used and purchased (around $300) but with a few security checks and stuff missing. Can anyone remember it or find the link? 

     

     

    EDIT: Found it, it was located at http://design1online.com/, but that site seems to be down, last facebook status update was in January :/

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